One of Ours Part 5

"But what do you expect? What can happen to you, except in your own mind? If I get through my work, and get an afternoon off to see my friends like this, it's enough for me."

"Is it? Well, if we've only got once to live, it seems like there ought to be something--well, something splendid about life, sometimes."

Ernest was sympathetic now. He drew nearer to Claude as they walked along and looked at him sidewise with concern. "You Americans are always looking for something outside yourselves to warm you up, and it is no way to do. In old countries, where not very much can happen to us, we know that,--and we learn to make the most of little things."

"The martyrs must have found something outside themselves.

Otherwise they could have made themselves comfortable with little things."

"Why, I should say they were the ones who had nothing but their idea! It would be ridiculous to get burned at the stake for the sensation. Sometimes I think the martyrs had a good deal of vanity to help them along, too."

Claude thought Ernest had never been so tiresome. He squinted at a bright object across the fields and said cuttingly, "The fact is, Ernest, you think a man ought to be satisfied with his board and clothes and Sundays off, don't you?"

Ernest laughed rather mournfully. "It doesn't matter much what I think about it; things are as they are. Nothing is going to reach down from the sky and pick a man up, I guess."

Claude muttered something to himself, twisting his chin about over his collar as if he had a bridle-bit in his mouth.

The sun had dropped low, and the two boys, as Mrs. Wheeler watched them from the kitchen window, seemed to be walking beside a prairie fire. She smiled as she saw their black figures moving along on the crest of the hill against the golden sky; even at that distance the one looked so adaptable, and the other so unyielding. They were arguing, probably, and probably Claude was on the wrong side.

IX

After the vacation Claude again settled down to his reading in the University Library. He worked at a table next the alcove where the books on painting and sculpture were kept. The art students, all of whom were girls, read and whispered together in this enclosure, and he could enjoy their company without having to talk to them. They were lively and friendly; they often asked him to lift heavy books and portfolios from the shelves, and greeted him gaily when he met them in the street or on the campus, and talked to him with the easy cordiality usual between boys and girls in a co-educational school. One of these girls, Miss Peachy Millmore, was different from the others,--different from any girl Claude had ever known. She came from Georgia, and was spending the winter with her aunt on B street.

Although she was short and plump, Miss Millmore moved with what might be called a "carriage," and she had altogether more manner and more reserve than the Western girls. Her hair was yellow and curly,--the short ringlets about her ears were just the colour of a new chicken. Her vivid blue eyes were a trifle too prominent, and a generous blush of colour mantled her cheeks. It seemed to pulsate there,-one had a desire to touch her cheeks to see if they were hot. The Erlich brothers and their friends called her "the Georgia peach." She was considered very pretty, and the University boys had rushed her when she first came to town. Since then her vogue had somewhat declined.

Miss Millmore often lingered about the campus to walk down town with Claude. However he tried to adapt his long stride to her tripping gait, she was sure to get out of breath. She was always dropping her gloves or her sketchbook or her purse, and he liked to pick them up for her, and to pull on her rubbers, which kept slipping off at the heel. She was very kind to single him out and be so gracious to him, he thought. She even coaxed him to pose in his track clothes for the life cla.s.s on Sat.u.r.day morning, telling him that he had "a magnificent physique," a compliment which covered him with confusion. But he posed, of course.

Claude looked forward to seeing Peachy Millmore, missed her if she were not in the alcove, found it quite natural that she should explain her absences to him,--tell him how often she washed her hair and how long it was when she uncoiled it.

One Friday in February Julius Erlich overtook Claude on the campus and proposed that they should try the skating tomorrow.

"Yes, I'm going out," Claude replied. "I've promised to teach Miss Millmore to skate. Won't you come along and help me?"

Julius laughed indulgently. "Oh, no! Some other time. I don't want to break in on that."

"Nonsense! You could teach her better than I."

"Oh, I haven't the courage!"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean."

"No, I don't. Why do you always laugh about that girl, anyhow?"

Julius made a little grimace. "She wrote some awfully slushy letters to Phil Bowen, and he read them aloud at the frat house one night."

"Didn't you slap him?" Claude demanded, turning red.

"Well, I would have thought I would," said Julius smiling, "but I didn't. They were too silly to make a fuss about. I've been wary of the Georgia peach ever since. If you touched that sort of peach ever so lightly, it might remain in your hand."

"I don't think so," replied Claude haughtily. "She's only kind-hearted."

"Perhaps you're right. But I'm terribly afraid of girls who are too kindhearted," Julius confessed. He had wanted to drop Claude a word of warning for some time.

Claude kept his engagement with Miss Millmore. He took her out to the skating pond several times, indeed, though in the beginning he told her he feared her ankles were too weak. Their last excursion was made by moonlight, and after that evening Claude avoided Miss Millmore when he could do so without being rude. She was attractive to him no more. It was her way to subdue by clinging contact. One could scarcely call it design; it was a degree less subtle than that. She had already thus subdued a pale cousin in Atlanta, and it was on this account that she had been sent North. She had, Claude angrily admitted, no reserve,--though when one first met her she seemed to have so much. Her eager susceptibility presented not the slightest temptation to him. He was a boy with strong impulses, and he detested the idea of trifling with them. The talk of the disreputable men his father kept about the place at home, instead of corrupting him, had given him a sharp disgust for sensuality. He had an almost Hippolytean pride in candour.

X

The Erlich family loved anniversaries, birthdays, occasions. That spring Mrs. Erlich's first cousin, Wilhelmina Schroeder-Schatz, who sang with the Chicago Opera Company, came to Lincoln as soloist for the May Festival. As the date of her engagement approached, her relatives began planning to entertain her. The Matinee Musical was to give a formal reception for the singer, so the Erlichs decided upon a dinner. Each member of the family invited one guest, and they had great difficulty in deciding which of their friends would be most appreciative of the honour.

There were to be more men than women, because Mrs. Erlich remembered that cousin Wilhelmina had never been partial to the society of her own s.e.x.

One evening when her sons were revising their list, Mrs. Erlich reminded them that she had not as yet named her guest. "For me,"

she said with decision, "you may put down Claude Wheeler."

This announcement was met with groans and laughter.

"You don't mean it, Mother," the oldest son protested. "Poor old Claude wouldn't know what it was all about,--and one stick can spoil a dinner party."

Mrs. Erlich shook her finger at him with conviction. "You will see; your cousin Wilhelmina will be more interested in that boy than in any of the others!"

Julius thought if she were not too strongly opposed she might still yield her point. "For one thing, Mother, Claude hasn't any dinner clothes," he murmured. She nodded to him. "That has been attended to, Herr Julius. He is having some made. When I sounded him, he told me he could easily afford it."

The boys said if things had gone as far as that, they supposed they would have to make the best of it, and the eldest wrote down "Claude Wheeler" with a flourish.

If the Erlich boys were apprehensive, their anxiety was nothing to Claude's. He was to take Mrs. Erlich to Madame Schroeder-Schatz's recital, and on the evening of the concert, when he appeared at the door, the boys dragged him in to look him over. Otto turned on all the lights, and Mrs. Erlich, in her new black lace over white satin, fluttered into the parlour to see what figure her escort cut.

Claude pulled off his overcoat as he was bid, and presented himself in the sooty blackness of fresh broadcloth. Mrs. Erlich's eyes swept his long black legs, his smooth shoulders, and lastly his square red head, affectionately inclined toward her. She laughed and clapped her hands.

"Now all the girls will turn round in their seats to look, and wonder where I got him!"

Claude began to bestow her belongings in his overcoat pockets; opera gla.s.ses in one, fan in another. She put a lorgnette into her little bag, along with her powder-box, handkerchief and smelling salts,--there was even a little silver box of peppermint drops, in case she might begin to cough. She drew on her long gloves, arranged a lace scarf over her hair, and at last was ready to have the evening cloak which Claude held wound about her. When she reached up and took his arm, bowing to her sons, they laughed and liked Claude better. His steady, protecting air was a frame for the gay little picture she made.

The dinner party came off the next evening. The guest of honour, Madame Wilhelmina Schroeder-Schatz, was some years younger than her cousin, Augusta Erlich. She was short, stalwart, with an enormous chest, a fine head, and a commanding presence. Her great contralto voice, which she used without much discretion, was a really superb organ and gave people a pleasure as substantial as food and drink. At dinner she sat on the right of the oldest son.

Claude, beside Mrs. Erlich at the other end of the table, watched attentively the lady attired in green velvet and blazing rhinestones.

After dinner, as Madame Schroeder-Schatz swept out of the dining room, she dropped her cousin's arm and stopped before Claude, who stood at attention behind his chair.

"If Cousin Augusta can spare you, we must have a little talk together. We have been very far separated," she said.

She led Claude to one of the window seats in the living-room, at once complained of a draft, and sent him to hunt for her green scarf. He brought it and carefully put it about her shoulders; but after a few moments, she threw it off with a slightly annoyed air, as if she had never wanted it. Claude with solicitude reminded her about the draft.

"Draft?" she said lifting her chin, "there is no draft here."

She asked Claude where he lived, how much land his father owned, what crops they raised, and about their poultry and dairy. When she was a child she had lived on a farm in Bavaria, and she seemed to know a good deal about farming and live-stock. She was disapproving when Claude told her they rented half their land to other farmers. "If I were a young man, I would begin to acquire land, and I would not stop until I had a whole county," she declared. She said that when she met new people, she liked to find out the way they made their living; her own way was a hard one.